Quite Clearly
by justcallmesmitty
Summary: Set toward the end of "Sacrifice," but before the graveside scene, this one-shot is meant to grant insight into Mary's head as she transitions emotionally between Francis and Bash. Frary-but-not-Frary, angst-but-not-angst. It is what it is – a character study for my own sanity, but hopefully one to aid in restoring yours, as well.


_I don't know what I've done or if I like what I've begun._

The chapel sits quiet tonight, with only the occasional priest moving about in the background – lighting candles, praying before the main altar. This building has stood for centuries, holding the worship of monks and now of kings. It comforts me to know that history will stretch on before me as it has behind.

A much-needed reminder that I am not fully alone here, however alone I may feel.

_Hail Mary, full of grace ..._

Fear grips me at the possibility that no amount of time, no number of prayers murmured by my lips will spare my soul from what I have done. Lives have been lost. Innocence traded.

I can't escape the deep, unsettling ache. It positions itself in my bones and I can feel it fray at the edges of my mind. My vision doubles, eyelids combating the exhaustion, twitching and fighting in an effort to find the rest they crave. The rosary slaps softly against my skin as I finish the prayer, move my hand to signal the cross, and begin again.

_One moment more_.

That is all I ask tonight. One last moment to pray again for Isobel's soul – that God might grant her mercy even in her ignorance. A single moment to watch the votive upon the altar as its flame flickers and dies, burning the last of its wick. One moment more to gaze up at the face of my namesake, to hope for my own redemption.

It has been too long since I found a moment to steal away in the quiet, but with Bash's legitimization underway and Isobel's body safely buried beneath the loam, my world has finally stilled enough to do so.

However, the quiet does nothing but reveal I have no idea what it is that I've done, what I've set in motion – and that I certainly have no idea what to do now. Whispers fill the corners of my mind, questioning my decisions and my reckless impatience in finding a solution.

I rise from the kneeler, having sat for hours through the day's gloaming and into the night. My knees twinge, stiff and debilitated by my lack of movement. The skirt of my dress falls about my ankles, slightly rumpled. I try to smooth it, but cannot rid it of the wrinkles.

Proper penance cannot be paid easily, I remind myself. The creases will come out with a hot iron. Perhaps my guilt will be removed from me, in kind, by time and by suffering through the repercussions of my choices.

The serenity and warmth of the chapel retreats behind me as my feet reluctantly drag the rest of me through the chilled corridors and to my rooms. It must be later than I thought, for the guard outside my door has changed in my absence.

"Your Grace." The man nods out of reverence before stepping aside. My arms push against the wood as I enter, closing the door behind me.

Though it is late, one of my lady's maids awaits my arrival to assist me in preparing for sleep. Her face gives away her exhaustion – she looks more than ready to retire to bed herself – and so she hastens through my toilette and quits the room without comment. As she leaves, I pull a hairbrush from a drawer and begin to sift my hair through its bristles.

Most nights, this action relaxes me, but it does not tonight. Tonight, it disarms me. I sense the stripping away of every piece of armor I've outfitted myself with these last several days. I have nothing left in me to try and restore it. The quiet grows uneasy and unnaturally loud.

Perhaps the events of the day were too much – Isobel, the baby, the carriage ride back to the castle. Neither my heart nor my body eluded the day's battery, and I hear the first of many sighs escape my mouth. Weariness has seeped into every crevice, every muscle. I can't deny that I am weary, that I am weak.

_Weakness_, I ashamedly acknowledge. _Utter weakness_.

My legs limp to the bed, barely able to support my full weight in the simple movement. It beckons to me and I collapse into it, striving to regain the numbness and apathy that I have clung to since riding off with Bash on what was meant to be my wedding day.

But it doesn't matter. It dawns on me that I am about to unravel in the blackness.

_Is this what it is to come undone_?

Emotions press to the forefront, the pressure building behind my eyes. My mind clouds over, becoming a haze of too many thoughts that cannot be traced to their source.

Wetness carves its way onto my cheeks, but I don't realize just how much streams out until it becomes difficult to breathe. I'm not sure exactly why I am crying – there are too many possibilities and the particular ones responsible have yet to unveil themselves. I choke in my attempts to inhale, to steady myself, and I summon what little muster remains in an attempt to push off the thoughts I wholeheartedly desire to evade.

_I am a queen_, I remind myself as I struggle to drag air into my lungs. Certainly I can do more than wallow in the darkness of my rooms. I try once more to compose myself, but it only lasts for a moment before control slips from my grasp again. My throat releases a sound I do not recognize as my own, but I coil into myself as its sound is still so very familiar.

It is the sound of a woman whose husband has been lost.

Aye, how many times have I watched a new widow as she crumples to the floorboards in distress over the discovery of her husband's death? 'Tis the same guttural anguish that now marks my own sobs.

I cannot bind my thoughts tonight or I would never have let them wander here. I cannot submerge them under a feigned surface of calm like I do in the daylight. There remains no last reserve of will in me to stem the tide, to hold back the realization that I mourn the loss of Francis as a widow.

Nevermind that the man I am now to marry will never be the man I have lost.

_Can I possibly be a wife to a man I never dreamed of calling 'husband' – to a man I do not love?_

With current circumstance being what it is, I cast aside Lola's warning from the harvest festival. Bash's feelings no longer remain a secret. I know he thinks he loves me, that he hopes for the best from our situation. Part of me acknowledges that I have played upon those feelings to bring us to where we are – desperately hoping to alter Nostradamus' words and Francis' fate.

_Does it even matter, though, now that we are to wed? Certainly Bash will love me, treasure me even in time, but to what end? Is it fair to him when I cannot fathom opening my heart to another?_

My frame seizes and I clutch at my abdomen. With no physical pain present, I can't help but wonder how everything about this hurts so deeply. Fresh sobs unmercifully wrack all the way through, anticipating where my thoughts will return to next.

In the tower, I was so quick to relay to Catherine that Francis had understood, that he had left _because_ he understood – but the truth is far more painful as it dances about me now, taunting me with its reality.

He slipped from the castle like the mists as they burn from the low places when they see the sunlight. The day dawned, I wakened, and he was gone. No farewell, no last glimpse.

_Simply and completely gone_.

And when I am honest about what I have done, I can't fault him for leaving. If someone sought to strip me of my birthright, of my family's inheritance, I wouldn't have remained idly by either. I would be out for blood – as I suspect he will be once the initial shock has abated.

_Hail Mary, full of grace ..._

The recitation grants me a small measure of strength and I breathe in deeply. The air rattles as it travels into my lungs, and it helps allay the worst of my grief. I cannot help but wonder where he has gone. This isn't his fault, so why should he be the one to go into exile voluntarily?

_Could he be hurt?_

The very idea causes a shudder to traverse my spine, for that is the very thing I have worked so hard to prevent. Unfortunately, my mind will allow me no rest tonight. It continues to assault me with unanswered questions as if ambushing me with arrows.

_Is he with someone – trying to forget me, to forget the dreams we once dreamt together?_

My eyes squeeze shut, bracing against the wave of misery that accompanies this possibility. The soft crying I had finally mollified turns to weeping, my quiet sobs to wails that scrape out from the depths of my throat. There she is again, the distraught widow.

_How can this hurt so badly? Can my heart withstand such complete agony?_

I determine to divert my mind, grasping for any thought to take mine off of what I have sacrificed.

_The baby! _I gasp again, straining for air. _Thanks be to God for the child's life!_

How grateful I am for the nuns' diligence in teaching even a girl-queen how to bring such a delightful, sweet rosy thing into the world. Surely the child's arrival and her mother's death must be the cause of my exhaustion and distress this evening. The fatigue has undoubtedly resulted in my inability to check emotion.

But the sweet smell of the child – and her soft warmth as she was placed into my hands – I cannot forget such a thing.

Bash glanced at me as he held the wee one in his arms. His face gave away his amazement, as if realizing for the first time that we might one day share in that joy together. It had taken every reserve of resolve I could summon to maintain my composure and return his smile with my own.

Fresh whispers broke out in my head as the baby's initial cries ceased. Though I tried to keep them at bay – to focus on all that still needed to be done to expunge any remaining evidence tying Bash to his uncle – their clamor refused to be silenced.

Instead, they grew to a scream. They screamed that this was not the plan, that the smile I wanted so desperately to see in that moment did not belong to the man to whom I am now betrothed. They screamed that part of me still longed to hear a child's cry and see its eyes open to reveal cobalt depths. And then they screamed louder still.

I could not stop them from doing so, much as they pained me. It took every last bit of strength to return to the grounds, enter the chapel, and seat myself before the Mother of our Lord. No wonder, indeed, that I did not move for hours.

Happiness, like love, is unquestionably a luxury I cannot afford and one which God does not owe me. _How many have told me that since I returned to Court?_

Important, aye – and valuable to my heart, for even the nuns saw that – but unnecessary to rule and rule well. Like the many who have gone before me, I will make the most out of my marriage for the sake of my country and the necessity of having a king at my side.

_It is the only way._

But will Bash fault me for not trembling at his touch, as I did when Francis would trail his fingers upon my skin? Will he fault me for giving away so much of myself – heart and body both – to his brother? Will he sense when my heart aches at night and my body shakes with sorrow that he will never have my heart as his own? Will he notice my disappointment when our first born's locks are dark and eyes green? Or will he grieve alongside me, for the rest of my days?

_Might he possibly understand? And, though it isn't fair to him, what option do I have?_

The thought that Francis might die because of something preventable remains too painful to consider. Our marriage would not be a choice – it would be an acquiescence to fate itself. I would never escape the knowledge that I would one day live without him nor would I find recourse from the accompanying and paralyzing fear.

_This is madness._

Those words once slipped from my lips, but it is his voice I hear as I recall them. His skepticism, his final entreaty for me to marry him have been seared into memory. The way in which he cradled my hands in his own, padding circles with his thumb, causes my skin to crawl as it remembers. Though there had been no need, our engagement sure, still he had asked me to marry him. _Twice_.

The darkness yields no escape, forcing me to ask myself whether I truly believe my attempts to circumvent his fate will alleviate my fears of it coming to pass. My honest answer is not the one I want. I push it aside until I hear his voice sound once more from the recesses of my mind and I can no longer ignore it.

_I see a future for us, quite clearly. We would be happy._

Neither the fervor of my prayers nor sheer force of will can quell the shaking that consumes me now. Sobs erupt from their dormancy and threaten anew to spill over into the stillness of the room. I would like to think that the roots of my misery are in the future Francis saw so clearly and has now lost, but I know better.

Because I once saw the same future – quite clearly – _and we would have been happy_.

Perhaps his absence will prove favorable. _Yes, perhaps it is better this way. _I am not sure I could resist another advance on his behalf. With him gone, maybe Bash and I …

_Hail Mary, full of grace ..._

Yes, what of Bash? My mind circles back to him and how he doesn't really want to be king. I can't continue to fool myself into thinking he might make a suitable substitute for Francis any longer.

_He is not, nor will he ever be, Francis._

And what if he decides it isn't worthwhile to bring so much pain to his family just to be king, just to keep his brother alive? What if the lure of me isn't enough to see the plan through to our marriage? I couldn't bear to repeat what happened with Francis in the throne room, to see how pain etches the lines of a man's face simply because I couldn't ... because I couldn't ...

I cannot even finish the thought in my head. The scene unfolds before my eyes as if it were here and not in the past. A never-ending moment of torture.

He had been so broken, and yet so calm. Kingly in spite of it all. I sensed his white rage simmering beneath his stoic façade at the thought his brother would take both his birthright and his bride. But he spoke without the anger – only presenting the sorrow.

I nearly gave in at that moment, every fiber of my body aching for him – my chest pitched ever-so-slightly toward him. His sense of justice and mercy mingled somehow as he spoke first to his mother, then to me, and finally to Bash.

The ache will not leave me, though I have pled with God to take it from me.

I have no option but to marry into the house of Valois. No alternative exists, no recourse. With my mother pressuring me into staking my claim to the English throne, I need France and its men to support what will undoubtedly end in warfare.

Warfare. _Widows weeping for their husbands._

I must be practical about this. Widows weep, bury their husbands, and often remarry. I will do the same. My nights cannot become this. Bash will require everything I can offer in grooming him to be king, first of Scotland and later of France.

_In time, perhaps I might even …_

I cannot bring myself to complete the idea that I might love him in time, not even in my head. I have tasted of the sweetest and purest love, and I have buried it in the ground as a widow.

But perhaps, just perhaps, I might find it in my heart to love Bash differently. He deserves that. His willingness to stand by my side, to put aside his own easy comfort in an attempt to save Francis from an early death – aye, he deserves that I at least try.

My face red and raw, my eyes once more set themselves upon a course toward sleep. I have felt it all, here in the darkness, and now there is no more to feel. I have bargained with the devil to save a man's life and my only hope is that I have. My eyelids flutter shut.

_Hail Mary, full of grace ..._

* * *

**Notes**: Lyric at the top is from "Where I Stood" by Missy Higgins. I built my chapel description on the Chapel of the Trinity at Fontainebleau, which was renovated during Henry's lifetime.

**Special Thanks**: The lovely Robin served as beta and sounding board for this piece, and I'm so thoroughly grateful that she didn't think I was crazy after she read it. I would also like to thank my creative writing professor from college who told me I couldn't write fiction – every time I write something, I think of her and determine to be a better writer.

**Disclaimer**: "Reign" is the creative property of CBS/CW and Laurie McCarthy. I own nothing but the words themselves.


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